Yunnan horse

Extinct species of mammal

Yunnan horse
Temporal range: Pleistocene
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Perissodactyla
Family: Equidae
Genus: Equus
Subgenus: incertae sedis
Species:
E. yunnanensis
Binomial name
Equus yunnanensis
Colbert (1940)

The Yunnan horse (Equus yunnanensis) is an extinct species of equine that was present in East Asia during the Pleistocene[1][2][3] very likely as a grazer on open tracts of grassland.[1] It was a small equine comparable in size to the modern Przewalski's horse.

It was first described by Edwin H. Colbert from dental fossils collected by Walter W. Granger in the Ma Kai Valley in northern Yunnan ten miles south of the town of Ma kai in Guangnan County as part of the program of the Central Asiatic Expeditions of the American Museum of Natural History in the winter of 1926–1927.[2] They were the most numerous fossils of a single type of animal in the Ma Kai Valley deposits.

Edwin H. Colbert thought it almost identical with an Equus collected by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the Upper Irrawaddy sediments of Myanmar: "Indeed, judging by the evidence at hand, these two representations of the genus, one in Burma and one in Yunnan appear to be cospecific".[2]

Authors have considered it a "stenonine horse", probably only distantly related to true horses.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b Elewa, Ashraf M. T. (2008). Mass Extinction. Springer ISBN 978-3-540-75915-7 p. 172
  2. ^ a b c Colbert, EH. (1940). Pleistocene mammals from the Ma Kai valley of northern Yunnan, China. American Museum Novitates, 1099
  3. ^ Liu H, Yu Y, (1974), New materials of E. yunnanensis in Yanmou, Yunnan. On diagnosis of E. yunnanensis and phylogeny of Equus in Asia. Vertebrata PalAsiatica, 12 (2), 126–134.
  4. ^ Sun, Boyang; Deng, Tao (2019-11-13). "The Equus Datum and the Early Radiation of Equus in China". Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 7. doi:10.3389/fevo.2019.00429. ISSN 2296-701X.
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Species of the genus Equus
Extinct species are marked
Asses
African wild ass
(Equus africanus)
  • Nubian wild ass (Equus africanus africanus)
  • Donkey (Equus africanus asinus)
  • †Atlas wild ass (Equus africanus atlanticus)
  • Somali wild ass (Equus africanus somaliensis)
Onager / Asiatic wild ass
(Equus hemionus)
  • Mongolian wild ass (Equus hemionus hemionus)
  • †Syrian wild ass (Equus hemionus hemippus)
  • Indian wild ass (Equus hemionus khur)
  • Turkmenian kulan (Equus hemionus kulan)
  • Persian onager (Equus hemionus onager)
  • †European wild ass (Equus hemionus hydruntinus)
Kiang/Tibetan wild ass
(Equus kiang)
  • Western kiang (Equus kiang kiang)
  • Northern kiang (Equus kiang chu)
  • Eastern kiang (Equus kiang holdereri)
  • Southern kiang (Equus kiang polyodon)
Horses
Wild horse (Equus ferus)
  • Horse (Equus ferus caballus)
  • †Tarpan (Equus ferus ferus)
  • Przewalski's horse (Equus ferus przewalskii)
Zebras
Plains zebra (Equus quagga)
  • †Quagga (Equus quagga quagga)
  • Burchell's zebra (Equus quagga burchellii)
  • Grant's zebra (Equus quagga boehmi)
  • Maneless zebra (Equus quagga borensis)
  • Chapman's zebra (Equus quagga chapmani)
  • Crawshay's zebra (Equus quagga crawshayi)
  • Selous' zebra (Equus quagga selousi)
Mountain zebra (Equus zebra)
  • Cape mountain zebra (Equus zebra zebra)
  • Hartmann's mountain zebra (Equus zebra hartmannae)
Grévy's zebra (Equus grevy)
  • Grévy's zebra (Equus grevy)
HybridsPrehistoric
Equus species
Taxon identifiers
Equus yunnanensis